Christopher Nolan takes top prize at Directors Guild awards, effectively guaranteeing the Oscar

The competition still has a chance, but it's rare for the DGA winner to not get the Oscar

By Sam Barsanti  |  February 11, 2024 | 5:10pm
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Christopher Nolan takes top prize at Directors Guild awards, effectively guaranteeing the Oscar
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We’re still about a month away from the Academy Awards, but Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan can probably start clearing some shelf space next to his new Golden Globes and that WGA award he won for Inception a decade ago. That’s because he took the top prize—Outstanding Directorial Achievement In Theatrical Feature Film—at last night’s Directors Guild Of America awards, which pretty much makes him a lock for the Best Director Oscar as well. (ABC News points out that, while a lot more people vote on the DGA Awards, the Oscars have only gone with a different winner eight times in the last 75 years, most recently in 2019 when the DGA went to Sam Mendes for 1917 and the Oscar went to Bong Joon-ho for Parasite.)

Assuming he wins, then, this will be Nolan’s first Oscar, which also seems like a narrative that the Motion Picture Academy would get a kick out of—though it would be a first Oscar for everyone but Martin Scorsese this year, so that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Elsewhere at the DGA Awards, which were hosted by Judd Apatow and included a funny bit where he said that his agents told him to hold out for money but he took the first offer “in the spirit of the DGA,” Celine Song won the award for first-time feature film directors for the lovely Past Lives, Peter Hoar won the dramatic TV award for The Last Of Us’ “Long,Long Time,” and Christopher Storer won the comedy TV award for The Bear’s “The Fishes” (The Bear is a comedy).

You can see the full list of nominees and winners at Variety, the rest of which most likely have no bearing on the Oscars—though, for all we know, this year could start a trend where Christopher Nolan wins an Oscar every time Lessons In Chemistry wins a DGA Award.

 
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